Outdoor pest id and help, please!

[FishDude]

Here are my current plants, the auto northern lights isn't looking quite as good as the auto Swiss cheese...

The culprit, something has stripped off the bark from the soil line down.

So the questions: wtf happened? How do I keep it from happening again? Is this plant compost?

 

[clemmy61]

looks like a rodent munched on it or perhaps its ( Vascular wilts ) , or maybe ( Borers ) tunneling in the wood cause damage to the vascular system and typically causing wilting leaves and branch dieback. symptom of borer damage may appear suddenly . OR it could be as simple as water rot to much water close to the stem and not enough air circulation to dry it off, I see you have some sort of plastic green house. Pests are a big pain in the back side where the sun don't shine (unless yer a nudist), when I ever keep a plant outside, I use crushed up eggshells, keeps the slugs at bay . Cayenne pepper is great for keeping bugs, especially ants, away from your garden. Simply sprinkle the spicy stuff on top of the dirt in your garden. You will have to add more on a regular basis as watering will wash it away. even your own whizz (urine not cheese whizz ) will keep lil 4 legged critters away.. don't use pesticides cuz yer going to ultimately smoke your plant and you don't want to be sucking up any burnt pesticides in your lungs. when using compost soil you may want to sterilize it before planting you ladies.you can also try keeping some lady bugs with your plants, tricky thing is keeping them there , to do so . get a small tiny dish put 3 or 4 rasins in it and add a lil bit of water, they love it thus making your pot garden home sweet home

 

[FishDude]

Thanks! I pulled the plant today. It was completely girdled I imagine it must have been a mammal of some sort. Hopefully an isolated incident, making my plants rodent proof seems like a real PITA.

Growing outside will result in a lost plant now and again I guess. Bummer though, I've never tried northern lights before and was looking forward to it.

 

[Anthropolis]

Hey bro, sorry to hear you lost one. In the future, if you can get something called Neem Meal or Neem Cake, it sounds whacky but its just crunched up bit from the Indian Neem tree. If you put a handful of it down around your plants, that will keep many bad things away. I use that on all my canna plants, and vegetable garden too. It's a pretty popular organic item, so it shouldn't be hard to get. I get mine from www.neemresource.com but outside the US you'll have to google for it.